More than half of all the textiles use today are polyester. You will definitely have poly in your wardrobe, even if you prefer natural fibres. Synthetics are lurking everywhere, whether as polyester, nylon, or blends mixed with cotton. Poly is cheap, ubiquitous and it's not going away any time soon. It's also made from fossil fuels, doesn't biodegrade and most of it ends up as waste.
Can recycling fix it? Ask the expert - Cyndi Rhoades!
A UK-based, US-raised activist turned entrepreneur, she founded Worn Again Technologies (originally called Worn Again) in 2005 - determined to make a difference and create a business out of solving the challenge of textiles ending up in landfill or incineration.
Initially, she looked to upcycling. “It was really hard it make it work at scale, but also ultimately we weren’t solving the problem of textile waste," she says. "Once these second-life products were used, they would end up in landfill anyway. So we were only postponing textiles going to landfill. It made us realise that recycling at a molecular level was the solution.”
From her formative days in London's early 2000s sustainable fashion scene, to living on a barge off-the-grid today, Cyndi has a long view on how this space has evolved and what's coming next.
Ever wondered how virgin polyester is actually made? Did you know the recycled kind is almost always made from recycled plastic bottles, not textiles? How sustainable is it? How do we decide? It is greenwashing? Can we really make fashion circular? What would that look like? Why is it taking so damn long? This Episode is like a masterclass in material-to-material recycling.
NOTES
WORN AGAIN TECHNOLOGIES is a developing unique polymer recycling processes. They say: “Worn Again Technologies’ regenerative technology is the missing link that enables the circularity of PET and cellulosic raw materials, replacing the use of virgin resources. The process allows these materials to go back into manufacturing, moving away from linear supply chain to a circular system, whilst providing long-term sustainable resource security.
By keeping the world’s resources in constant circulation, we can drive economic, social and environmental benefits. Our ambition is to scale and license our technology to global plant operators as quickly as possible with the help of strategic partners and an expert team, accelerating us all towards a circular world.” More here.
WORLD CIRCULAR TEXTILES DAY (October 8) was set up to raise awareness around achieving a circular textiles world by 2050, across industry and with the wider general public. https://worldcirculartextilesday.com/
POLYESTER fabric is basically plastic fabric made by mixing ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid.
POLYMER “By definition, polymers are large molecules made by bonding (chemically linking) a series of building blocks. The word polymer comes from the Greek words for ‘many parts.’ Each of those parts is scientists call a MONOMER (which in Greek means ‘one part’). Think of a polymer as a chain, with each of its links a monomer. Those monomers can be simple — just an atom or two or three — or they might be complicated ring-shaped structures containing a dozen or more atoms. In an artificial polymer, each of the chain’s links will often be identical to its neighbors.” Via Scienceforstudents.org
rPET - recycled polyethylene terephthalate is almost always recycled from used plastic bottles
NUMBERS The apparel industry accounts for around 32 million tons of the 57 million tons of polyester used each year. Currently, only approximately 14% of this comes from recycled inputs. (Source, Textile Exchange.)
CARBON FOOTPRINT OF RECYCLED POLY VS. VIRGIN According to a study by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, it requires 59 % less energy to make rPET than producing the virgin stuff.
TEXTILE EXCHANGE the not for profit organisation that promotes preferred fibres, standards and certifications, has set the industry a target to reach 45% recycled inputs for poly by 2025. Claire Bergkamp is Textile Exchange’s the COO. She used to head up sustainability at Stella McCartney -listen to her on Episode 73 of the podcast here.
CHANGING MARKETS demonstrates how the historical and projected growth of synthetic fibres, such as polyester, has become the backbone of the prevailing unsustainable fast fashion business model, which is driving runaway consumption and presents a major obstacle to a circular economy.
IKEA & H&M STUDY collected 166 samples of cotton-based textiles, mostly from donated clothes but also some pre-consumer waste. They apparently shredded the samples and spent months running them through chemical analysis in 8,000 tests. And found a load of nasties lurking in them. Think chromium compounds heavy metals. Ikea’s Nils Mansen said the problem is, these batches of donated clothes could come from anywhere, and at the moment there’s no way to do document or trace everything used in their production.
WTO PROTESTS The 1999 Seattle WTO protests, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle, were a series of protests surrounding the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, when members of the World Trade Organization convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington. By the way, Naomi Klein’s No Logo is a must-read.
ANTI-APATHY started in 2002 as an eco-event in London nightclubs. In 2008, in collaboration with Ethical Fashion Forum and Futerra, they launched the world’s first ever awards dedicated to improving social and environmental standards in the fashion industry - the RE:Fashion Awards.
JUNKY STYLING Designers Annika Sanders and Kerry Seager ran this upcycling label out of East London from 1997 to 2012.
GALAHAD CLARK is a member of the Clarks shoe company (famed for making the sensible British school shoes Clare grew up laced into). He now runs an eco footwear brand called Vivibarefoot.
THTC was founded in 1999 with the intention of “bringing hemp to the high street and helping to rid this wonderful plant of some of its hippie connotations.” Still going strong. More here.
ESTHETICA was London Fashion Week’s pioneering sustainable design hub. To discover more, listen to Orsola De Castro and Carry Somers. As Cyndi says, many of our guests were involved in this London scene: try Episode 60 with fabbest Dilys Williams and The Episode with Christoper Raeburn & Episode 56 with Tamsin LeJeune. More small-world fun - Sarah Ditty, formerly Fashion Revolution’s policy director, used to work for Cyndi at Worn Again. Sarah’s ep is here.
BECKY EARLEY is a sustainable textiles academic, ex Chelsea College of Arts, currently co-director for UAL's Centre for Circular Design in London.
“We finally realised that upcycling as a business model, [it was] really hard it make it work at scale, but also ultimately we weren’t solving the problem of textile waste - once these second-life products were used, they would end up in landfill anyway. So we were they we were only postponing textiles going to landfill. What it made us realise was the recycling at a molecular level was the solution.” - Cyndi Rhoades
OTHER INNOVATORS
Cyndi says there are “a multitude of different approaches which can/will play a valuable role in the wider portfolio of recycling/circular solutions.” She mentions TEIJIN - the Japanese company began making recycled poly years ago, and by 2014 was working with the likes of Patagonia to capture and collect textiles waste as feedstock. ISKO, the Turkish denim manufacturer, has signed a licensing agreement with Hong Kong based textile research and development company HKRITA to develop what they are calling “a revolutionary Green Machine” - it separates and recycles cotton and polyester blends at scale via a close-loop hydrothermal process. INFINITED FIBER COMPANY, based in Finland, has just secured funding from Zalando, Adidas, Patagonia, H&M and Bestseller to scale their process which works with cellulose-based feedstocks. And everyone’s talking about Swedish company RENEWCEL - they focus on “waste with high cellulosic content, like cotton or viscose” and have been working with Levi’s. More here.